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Sasaki: Nostalgia fest for a faraway home

Terry Durack
Terry Durack

Go-to dish: 'Caramel and nuts' from the hitokuchi-gashi menu.
Go-to dish: 'Caramel and nuts' from the hitokuchi-gashi menu.Christopher Pearce

14.5/20

Japanese$$

We all know Tuscany in Italy, Provence in France, and Mendoza in Argentina. But Shimane, in Japan? Sorry, never heard of it. When I say as much, Yu Sasaki smiles. "Nobody knows my home," he says. "Nobody has been there."

So it's fitting that Sasaki's tiny restaurant in Surry Hills is not on everybody's radar, sandwiched, as it is, into a laneway behind his Cre Asian cafe and macaronerie on the city side of Wentworth Avenue.

Pretty much everything about the place – the Sodeshi pottery, gyuto knives and washi paper on which the menus are printed, even the architect, Natsumi Yawata – hails from the remote prefecture on the western side of Honshu island.

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The spare, intrinsically Japanese interior.
The spare, intrinsically Japanese interior.Dominic Lorrimer

The spare, intrinsically Japanese interior celebrates the beauty of everyday things. A single shelf for ceramics. A single candle on the wall. A small box on the floor for holding bags, or for those sitting in the antechamber open to the street, knee rugs.

There are tables, but the best seats (hard, Tasmanian oak) are gathered around a small bar. It's such an intimate space that people feel compelled to talk in whispers – even the polite staff, who are a little difficult to understand.

The food also evokes Shimane, with the chef basing each dish on memories of his mother's home cooking.

Salt-cured whiting with a fine julienne of radish.
Salt-cured whiting with a fine julienne of radish.Christopher Pearce
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You'll struggle with the menu, divided as it is into meat, seafood, vegetable, side dish and bite-sized desserts known as hitokuchi-gashi. Is the whiting sunomono? Does egg denote chawan mushi? Kangaroo and ginger ($15), for instance, turns out to be a curiously satisfying pile of rich, shredded, soy-braised sweet meat, served with crunchy jicama and ginger ($15).

As the small dishes emerge from the tiny kitchen, however, it soon becomes clear that they all speak the same language.

There's the sensuality of a silken egg custard topped with generous fingerlings of crab meat ($11), and the nothing-to-hide elegance of sweet, translucent slices of salt-cured whiting topped with a fine julienne of radish ($19), the fish gleaming against the dark plate like moonlight on water.

Red miso soup is as chunky as minestrone.
Red miso soup is as chunky as minestrone.Christopher Pearce

Briny mackerel is rolled around soft, warm, perfectly vinegared rice and capped with crisp, fibrous lotus stem ($23). Red miso soup ($10) is as chunky as minestrone, gutsy with vegetables, tofu, and gelatinous konnyaku (from the devil-tongue yam).

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Just the sort of thing a Japanese mum would give a favourite son who has just trudged home from school in the middle of a Honshu winter.

"Pork, salt and daikon" ($26) is a mystery parcel of pork chops cooked inside a bready salt crust sarcophagus; the pork dry and a struggle to eat. I love the big clay hotpot on the counter filled with rice studded with salmon (takikomi gohan, $12). When it's gone, it's gone.

Chef Yu Sasaki hails from Shimane in Japan.
Chef Yu Sasaki hails from Shimane in Japan.Christopher Pearce

The miniature sweet treats (what a cool idea) star a fun-times eating experience simply titled "caramel and nuts" ($6); a cherry blossom mould of crisp monaka rice wafer enclosing soy caramel praline nuts and chilled caramel mousse. Squish, bite, smile.

This little gem is simple and almost painfully heartfelt; a unique, nostalgic experience that is a world apart from the circus of teppanyaki or the glamour of sushi. It's not for everyone, which I've come to learn is not so much a criticism, as a compliment.

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Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.

The low-down

Best bit: The focus on a single region.

Worst bit: The cryptic menu.

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Terry DurackTerry Durack is the chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food.

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